Light weight composite panels for offshore use are known in the prior art. For example, Bain U.S. Pat. No. 3,815,300 shows a prefabricated flight deck structure for offshore drilling platforms. The deck structure comprises a honeycomb core between upper and lower plywood skins. The upper skin is waterproofed by a protective coating of fiberglass reinforced resin. A set of spaced, longitudinally and transversely extending beams supports the deck. The beams and deck structure are held together by metal bolts extending through the honeycomb core and both skins.
The prior art composite deck structures generally suffer from one or more serious disadvantages making them less than entirely suitable for their intended purpose. For example, prior art deck structures that are held together or fastened to adjacent superstructures with metal bolts are heavy, expensive, and time consuming to fabricate and assemble. In addition, when there is a fire near a wood or polymer panel held together by bolts, the connection to adjacent supports is quickly loosened as fire erodes portions of the panel adjacent to the bolts.
It is a principal objective of the present invention to provide a wall assembly suitable for attachment to adjacent support structures on ships and offshore platforms without any metal bolts or other through fasteners.
A related objective of the invention is to provide a wall assembly of the type described that can be assembled without any metal bolts or other through fasteners.
Additional objectives and advantages will become apparent to persons skilled in the art from the following specification and claims.